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sacred commodity no real news today so here is a draft of the sacred commodity, my theory paper, enjoy! The Sacred Commodity: Why Won�t Women Just Put Out? �Put out or get out.� I bet that all women have either heard this phrase explicitly or dealt with the implications of deciding whose place to go back to at the end of the date. For most women this point is a moment of crisis, especially when she really doesn�t want to continue the evening. But for those times when a woman does want to indulge in sexual intercourse, her choice is rife with personal and political significance. These implications extend beyond the normal woman at the end of a date to all women because, although we live in an almost sexually liberated society, many women still live by a moral code of respectability. I will argue that these morals are partly due to the view of sex as a sacred commodity; something that a woman cannot sell outright but often trades, whether implicitly or explicitly, for goods, services, and power within a relationship. Of course, sex as a sacred commodity is not the entire picture underlying women�s sexuality, but I believe that it is a major component to explaining why women still contain themselves sexually in our modern day. Despite its complexity, for my purposes, a pair of panties best expresses women�s sexuality. The transparent nature of the material used to make most of women�s undergarments clearly resembles the interactions between male hopes and female reality. With panties, the viewer can see the site of desire but he cannot have it, thus intimacy is both hinted at without completely being revealed. Panties themselves have a mystery about them that many men fantasize over because they are so close to the sexual goal of the heterosexual man but they also block that goal. By even coming close enough to see a woman�s panties, a man has been granted some access to her sexuality, but complete removal of her underwear, and what she cares to reveal, still remains completely under her control. The garments themselves are usually designed as slinky, small, and cut to reveal not to protect, thus heightening the tension between the visual and the sensual. What panties protect, however, is that sacred commodity, something that a woman slowly reveals about herself, something that she controls and that is forever out of reach of the male grasp unless he follows her rules. With skimpy panties especially, the point of covering the genitals is lost with their enhancement and direction towards the vital area, the area that is seen as the most desirable by men and the most restricted. The covering itself can also be seen metaphorically as a woman�s morals, the thin transparent veil between male chaos and societal respectability. Thus, panties conceal and reveal, tempt and withhold, and this power of the sacred commodity lies behind most of the sexual tension between men and women. The essence of the sacred commodity of sexual access relies upon the fact that it cannot be sold outright. Selling sex or prostitution is commonly seen as immoral. Society constantly discriminates against prostitutes, as evidenced by violent games such as Grand Theft Auto III (killing whores after you pay them garners more points than if you hadn�t), and legally (if you have prostitution on your criminal record you can almost never be employed again). Some prostitutes, however, work the game not out of need or poverty but out of pleasure for the job, the best of which I can mention is Annie Sprinkle who embraced the job title but gave it her own personal twists. Selling sex itself also serves to exemplify as the most explicit example of sexual access to women as a commodity. With prostitution, sex becomes as marketable as any other form of work that involves selling the body, e.g. modeling, athletics, etc. The concept of selling sex as sinful though derives from this idea that something must be sacred within sexual relations that cannot be reduced to a buyer/seller relationship. Instead, sex needs to be given on the basis of an emotional connection, whether merely lust or complete emotional love, and not placed upon the market like a common good because of its sacred nature. The strange thing is, however, that all women engage in the use of trading sex explicitly or implicitly for goods, services, or power in a relationship. Taking the first two categories, the best example of trading sexual access for goods occurs with the rituals of dating. The monetary backing still culturally rests upon the man who attempts to show his date a good time by buying dinner for her, taking her to see a show, etc. At the close of the date, most men and women understand that some form of physical affection needs to take place in order to give the occasion closure and express what both parties feel towards each other. I would like you to consider this point of the date the potential payoff for the man. Depending on the amount he has spent throughout the night, he usually expects the physical affection to be proportional; of course, this also varies based on income and amount of time spent together. For comparison, let us say that he takes her out to a burger joint and then to the movies, there he expects minimal affection, perhaps a kiss and a hug at the door, but if he takes her out to a fancy restaurant and a play he expects far more. The endings of these dates, even within my own experience, usually involve a discussion of whose residence to drive to and involve much pressure upon the woman to make the evening worthwhile after this man has done so much for her. Although usually neither party states these expectations explicitly, they exist under the surface of the evening and serve as a continual source of pressure for women to repay her date with sex, thus making sexual access the commodity that has been traded for a night out. Women�s trading sex for goods and services also occurs within marriage as well as dating. Many women do not receive either a formal or an informal education about such culturally coded masculine issues such as car maintenance and large repairs. These women rely upon male workers that need to be paid with money or their significant others who are willing to do these tasks for no cost. Although many women utilize the more obvious tactic of nagging to coax their husbands into performing certain household chores, they back these reminders up with the implicit threat of a loss of sex. An angry wife tends not to be very responsive to her husband�s overtures later in the evening for attention, thus to placate her and enhance his odds for success many men either consciously or subconsciously understand that he needs to follow her rules in order to receive the benefits. Marriage itself can be seen as a bargain between the sexes where the man agrees to remain committed to one woman and provide for her in order to retain full sexual access to her. The woman, in turn, agrees to perform certain tasks and duties for her husband, the main one of which being to allow him and only him sexual access. Wives that cheat on their husbands, and wives that work as prostitutes defy the conventions of normal marriage because they allow other men who have less of an investment access to the sacred commodity that their husband has worked so hard to protect and keep as his and his alone. Thus, the institution of marriage is the ultimate trade of sacred commodity for goods and services, not to mention power. Women often use sexual access as a form of power within most relationships. As mentioned above, the refusal or denial of sexual access due to fighting in a relationship often grants the woman a form of power over her mate and occasionally forces him to acquiesce to her wishes. Women also use sex as a form of power though by playing mind games against men while dating them. In addition to the implied contract between men and women on dates where men pay for the evening and women reciprocate through physical affection, women frequently use this lack of access at the end of a date as bait for a man to ask her out again. An example of this would be if, at the close of an evening, a woman gives her companion a nice session of necking but refuses to proceed with further physical affection for the evening, thus leaving the man frustrated but eager for more. Here the woman has retained her power over the night�s pleasures but has also teased her date just enough for him to request a second encounter. This second encounter should certainly lead to more in the man�s mind and the chase for the woman�s affections, and ultimately sexual access, begins. This chase allows to woman to exchange sexual access, or lack thereof, for power between them as well as goods and services. A better example where woman use sexual access as a sacred commodity to exchange for power occurs with single women and multiple dating. When a woman refuses to hide, and even informs her dates, that she will not remain committed to any single man until she chooses, she places the men she sees in the uncomfortable position of competing for sexual access. Each man feels that he has to outdo the rest and once he attains sexual access many react negatively when the same woman refuses to remain monogamous with them, despite men being culturally programmed to never remain monogamous with anyone. Here though, unlike the first example, it is not merely a lack of sexual access that keeps men returning to the same woman a.k.a. the thrill of the chase, but it is the access itself. Because women can choose who they mate with, the threat of losing access in and of itself grants women a form of power that they can tout over men. Most women, however, do not wish to acknowledge this openly, nor do they wish to highlight the fact that whether implicitly or explicitly many women trade the sacred commodity of sexual access for goods, services, and power, despite the negative connotations open prostitution carries. My point in writing this essay is simply this: women need to recognize that almost every one of us uses our sexuality as a commodity. Most of us do not sell it outright but this should not be seen as disgraceful because this form of sale is actually the most open and explicit representation of our daily lives, and perhaps that is why we continue to fear it. Although difficult to admit, the sacred commodity may be one reason that woman are not and cannot be completely liberated because, as the swinging scene once put it to me, �You got the pussy, you got the power,� the power to choose, the power to trade, and the power to sell.
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